Operation Snake, by Nick Carter
No month stated, 1969 Award Books
“I’d never been on a mission where so much was going on and so little was happening.”
So narrator Nick Carter tells us midway through this installment of Nick Carter: Killmaster, courtesy Jon Messmann, and folks sadly that for the most part sums up Operation Snake. This one’s nowhere near the crazed pulp majesty of Messmann’s earlier The Sea Trap, despite having a plot that features crazed cults, spiritual transference, and an actual yeti. For the most part, Operation Snake is a slow-moving travelogue set in Nepal, and I suspect “Nick’s” comment is Messmann’s subtle acknowledgement to the reader that the thrills have been few.
And yes, we’re in the first-person narrative years now, with Nick himself telling us about his mission. I find this conceit hard to believe; I mean when the hell does super-agent Nick Carter have the time to even write these books? At any rate he’s on the job when we meet him, flying into Nepal on his latest caper. One thing the first-person gimmick robs from us is the usual setup of Nick being called into Hawk’s office, being briefed, etc. As is the case here, Messmann just leaves all that to backstory quickly doled out by Nick as he looks through an airplane window. As usual he’d been called out of bed, on vacation and the usual setup, when he got the urgent call from Hawk to get into DC asap for briefing.
The plot Nick’s trying to stop this time is especially relevant today: the Red Chinese are taking advantage of the porous Nepalese border and sending Commie saboteurs over as “immigrants.” Couldn’t help but think of our own porous border and the countless unvetted immigrants who are literally being bussed into the country by the current administration, many of them with possible terror ties. (Not to mention the ones who have Covid but are dropped off on Texas city streets regardless.) But of course the big difference here is that the Federal government in Nick Carter’s world wants to stop such plots. So Nick is to wing his way over to Nepal, hook up with a local contact, and try to prevent a power-crazed monk from perpetrating the Red Chinese plan. Oh, and there’s also something about a yeti, aka the Abominable Snowman.
Abruptly upon entering Nepal Nick encounters Hilary Cobb, a hotstuff blonde British reporter with massive breastesses; Messmann, Zod bless him, is sure to mention those big boobs every single time Hilary appears. But Nick resents Hilary’s “masculine” attitude in how she’s such a nosy, bossy pest; our hero is particularly reactionary this time, telling us he hates it when pretty women spoil their prettiness by trying to act like men. And Hilary certainly sets him off, despite her massive gazoongas, which Nick can’t help but oggle. Indeed he makes it a point to leer at ‘em, making Hilary bridle with rage; this entertainingly misogynist stuff is similar, I recall, to how Nick treated the hotstuff marine scientist babe in The Sea Trap. And sure enough, it will only serve to (eventually) turn Hilary on good and proper.
In fact Nick’s treatment of Hilary is downright brutal in our touch-feely modern #metoo era; not knowing she’s dealing with a badass secret agent, Hilary tries to pull a fast one on Nick, sending him a fake summons so he leaves his hotel room and then slipping inside to steal his precious mountain climbing equipment. When Nick figures out what’s happened he quickly puts her to rights: he slaps her, ties her up, strips her, and of course oggles her boobs the whole time. Hilary is reduced to enraged tears. It’s all quite an uncomfortable sequence given that Nick is the friggin’ hero of the story! But we are to remember this all is occuring in a less sophisticated era, yadda yadda, and besides Nick’s just trying to keep the stubborn girl from following him out into the mountains, as he knows things are about to get very dangerous out there.
Nick heads into the mountains where he meets his contact, who of course turns out to be another hotstuff babe, this one a petite native named Khaleen. “You’re a very beautiful creature,” Nick later tells her in another display of his brutish skill with the ladies – and of course she likes it. Khaleen’s the daughter of a local notable who stands against Ghotak, the power-mad leader of the Snake Cult. So basically Ghotak claims to speak for the snake god but is really an agent of the Red Chinese, and Nick’s intent here is to act as someone who has travelled quite far to speak against Ghotak and get the natives to rise up against him. So in other words the plot too is from a less sophisticated age, the natives suitably superstitious and gullible, and likely would reduce overly-sensitive modern readers to their own enraged tears.
This is demonstrated posthaste when Ghotak calls a meeting at the temple that night, and per the ceremony a woman in the audience is chosen to “give” herself to the snake god, to be used by one of the men. All while tribal drumming is going on and a feverish pitch of eroticism is being reached by the onlookers, of course, with the expected orgy ensuing. Ghotak, as a challenge to Nick the interloper, calls on Khaleen for the honor, and she proceeds to storm onto the stage and starts dancing up a sensual storm. This bit is kind of overdone, with Nick trying to tamp down his horniness while protecting Khaleen’s virtue; he ends up storming the stage before any of the men can get to her and whisking her off to safety. However that night Khaleen repays Nick in the time-honored men’s adventure fashion: offering herself to him in his room. This leads to a mostly-inexplicit sequence; surprisingly, Messmann is much more conservative in tone here than he was in The Sea Trap.
Nick eventually tangles with the yeti in a memorable sequence; after the latest Ghotak challenge he heads into the mountain to fight the monster, which apparently serves Ghotak. Hilary manages to go along with him, and soon enough the two are being chased by the shaggy, hairy creature; Messmann of course has it that Nick doesn’t believe in the yeti even though the natives do. Even sophisticated types like Khaleen and her father, with their fancy British educations, believe the yeti exists. And now here Nick gets first-hand proof, and only manages to fight it off so he and Hilary can escape.
Stuck in the snowy expanse of the mountains overnight, Nick and Hilary engage in exactly the activities you’d expect. Even here Messmann keeps up the lovably misogynist tone of his hero, again recalling how Nick treated the main female character in The Sea Trap: “Are you going to try to make love to me?” Hillary asks, to which Nick responds: “I’m not going to try. I’m going to do it.” Indeed Nick taunts Hilary that soon enough she’ll be crying out in need for him, and sure enough she soon is. This bout’s a little more explicit than the one with Khaleen, but it soon develops that Messmann’s more concerned with the love triangle itself than he is with hardcore material. For Khaleen has fallen in love with Nick, slightly concerned he’ll soon be sleeping with the big-boobed “pretty” Englishwoman but trusting Nick regardless, and Nick slightly feeling like a heel for betraying her.
Of course the veteran reader knows where all this is going. First though we have another encounter with the yeti, which turns out to be a human-bear hybrid, the product of a Sherpa woman who “used” a bear, per Ghotak. The mad monk found the creature and raised it, keeping it a bloodthirsty animal for his own ends. A captured Nick is to be chased by the yeti, but for some inexplicable reason Ghotak decides to allow Nick to keep his Luger and stiletto! While the beasts’s hide is too tough for bullets to pierce, Nick soon discovers that the inside of its mouth isn’t resistant to 9mm slugs. But this will be it for the yeti subplot, and I feel Messmann didn’t exploit it as much as he could’ve.
Much more over the top is the finale, which sees Ghotak raising hell in his temple, complete with a trap door that leads to a room of poisonous snakes. Nick experiences what passes for heartbreak here, as one of the two women gives up her life to save him. Okay, a no-prize to whoever figures out which of the two women it is…the busty British babe who has spent the entire novel fighting Nick before bedding him, or the sultry but innocent native babe who is in love with him? Well anyway, Nick ends up finishing the novel on vacation with the surviving babe, pondering over “the difference between being wanted and being loved…the trick was to keep them apart.”
This is unexpected depth from a men’s adventure series, but the sort of thing that would become par for the course in Messmann’s work, as demonstrated in The Revenger and Jefferson Boone, Handyman. As it turns out this “relationship” subplot had more of an impact on me than the plot itself, so clearly I need more testosterone in my diet.
12 comments:
(Zwolf again)
Well, at least you got through almost three paragraphs before the obtrusive political horseshit interjected itself again. Congrats, the therapy must be working! Fuck, dude. It's like forwarded-forwared e-mails from my uncle nobody wants to talk to anymore... :p I know by now complaining won't help, but if I'm gonna have to read these while cringing and waiting for that junk to show up, you're gonna have to listen to me bitch about having to do it. That's the deal.
Anyway, I wondered when you'd get to this particular Nick Carter volume, with that "Yeti." Man, was I pissed about that when I read this one. Not only did we get ripped off from having a real Yeti (and if they're going to allow things like oysters the size of Secaucus, New Jersey, then a real Yeti is little enough to ask), we get this WOW-does-Jon-Messman-think-we're-stupid half-a-bear sumbitch. I could buy a "real" Yeti far easier than I can this nursery-school-understanding-of-biology critter. That's straight out of Ingagi (if you've never seen that, dig up a copy, it's woeful). And with bulletproof skin, yet. God.
And I don't have a sister, but if I did, I sure woudln't want her dating Jon Messman. Dude had some severe hatred of women, or at least any one with a brain of her own. Pretty much every book I've read by him has him coming across as a repressed gay dude who's trying too hard to talk about boobs while absolutely despising the thing-he-sees-as-a-life-support-system-for-boobs. His only "good" female characters might as well be robots... like Khaleen, who basically worships Nick like a god, for no reason I could see. She's so mindless and free of any personality of her own that her scenes with Nick are practically necrophilia. I get that some men's adventure writers think all men like their women to be basically blow-up fuckdolls (I think they underestimate us in that respect, but what do I know?), but the "hero" slapping around and halfway-raping any woman with her own ideas is pretty far to go. Messman was a mess, man.
He half-ass tried with the snake attack things, but they just didn't work. Messman likes trying "scary animals" books, but he's terrible at 'em. He wrote one horror novel, I forget the name of it, about killer sea creatures. And as crazy as I am about "critter books," (which means I've got to be lenient as hell about a lotta dumb plot things) I couldn't get more than a couple chapters into that shipwreck. And I read John Halkin's Squelch and liked it.
Given the Constitutional crisis we are now experiencing, with the potential to be as bad as the Civil War, Joe's political asides make perfect sense. He is concerned about our present crisis, as we all should be. Would you object so strongly, Zwolf, if you were on the same side as our host?
Joe, keep 'em flying! I can't count the number of books and authors I've tracked down as a result of your recommendations.
(Zwolf again)
"Sides" isn't really the issue, it's just intrusive and it's not what anybody's here for. We've all got our views, I don't think anybody comes to a pulp-fiction book review blog for political instruction, agree or disagree. Who needs it? I'd get just as irritated if I were talking with someone about, say, growing strawberries, and they couldn't stop going, "You know who I bet couldn't grow strawberries? Donald Trump, because he'd feed them bleach!" and then give me a link to some news story. I do know a few people like that and I avoid 'em.
Basically, It's a distraction from something that's supposed to be about escapism. I only mention it 'cuz the persistence of it has turned a few people I know off from coming here. I mean, do what ya wanna, I'll still like the blog, but the preoccupation with constant asides isn't helping anything.
Hi guys, thanks for the comments! Sorry for the delay but the blog has been on autopilot. Zwolf, totally hear you, and I am fine with your proposal -- you are free to air your grievances, same as always. But like I said, I'll certainly find a way to work something in if it resonates with the plot under discussion. And if you don't see a correlation between a plot about saboteurs slipping through a porous border and our own real-world crisis at the southern border, I don't know what to tell you. The fact that we are so close to the 20th anniversary of 9/11 doesn't fill me with much optimism. But then perhaps they won't bother, given that we've handed them such a sweeping victory in Afghanistan. Not to mention a couple billion dollars worth of military equipment as a bonus.
I wouldn't say my "asides" have been constant, but they might seem to be...because if you haven't noticed it, the real world is becoming more and more like a pulp novel. I mean take Covid; it's straight out of Norvell Page or JR Rosenberger. A (likely man-made) virus with a 99.9% survival rate for those under 60, but used to enforce an almost totalitarian control over a cowed public. Take a look at New South Wales, which has gone full-bore brutal in their lockdown, complete with straight-out-of-David-Alexander stuff like the dogs in a rescue shelter being shot dead because the owners were afraid people would come in to get the dogs and thus spread Covid. I mean, if just one person learns about stuff like this from one of my "asides," then I think it's worth it, and certainly justifies the loss of any thin-skinned readers. I don't monetize the blog, nor do I hype it on social media -- that should tell you how much effort I put into acquisition and retention.
Of course the only difference between pulp and our real world is that there are no heroes to save us -- so yeah, they're still "escapist" in that regard.
Now on to your other topics -- I actually reviewed that Messmann horror novel on here some months ago, "The Deadly Deep." In fact it was through one of your comments on your blog that got me to pick it up years ago. You bring up an interesting point vis-a-vis the misogyny in Messmann's work, but thinking back on it now, it only seems to be apparent in his Nick Carter novels. So far as I recall, the female characters are more standard in the Revenger and Handyman novels...I seem to recall them all being presented as intelligent, prone to quoting philosophy and poetry and whatnot, ie the sort of stuff people did before Facebook and Twitter. So I wonder what brought it out in Messmann in the Carter novels?
Also, when are you going to post more reviews at your blog??
Unknown, thank you for your comment as well, whoever you are! I appreciate the support. I do agree we are in the midst of a Constitutional crisis, but I think it's too late for anything to change. I used to really be into the ancient world and these past few years have given me insight into how citizens of Rome must've felt in the final years of the Empire: an ineffectual, venal, and corrupt bueraucracy, a weakened military (one wonders if they spent a lot of time designing togas for pregnant legionaires), an insecure border, and a virulent -- and violent -- religion from the East, one with a belief system that was anathema to the entire foundation of Roman society. Plus a changing of the equinox to boot! (Just as Taurus became Pisces then, now Pisces is becoming Aquarius.) But most importantly, an apathetic, disinterested public: "Who cares, so long as we still get free bread and circuses?" So in that regard, I think talk of Civil War will be just that -- talk.
I do agree with you that likely I wouldn't get any comments if I made digs against the right side of things, and as I've mentioned before you can see such digs in my earlier posts on the blog. The great divider would be my review of "NYPD 2025," which as it turns out was an incredibly prescient speculation (other than the androids, that is) of how reality would shape out. I mean, they even have to wear masks in public in that novel!! But at the time, I saw it all as paranoid right-wing gibberish because I had my blinders on. So in that regard I can see what Zwolf means, and I try to refrain from these asides, I really do. But at the same time, we all live in this world at this time, and as I say, things are getting more and more insane...and in many cases relevant to the insane plots of some of these books.
(Zwolf again)
Cool deal. I'll keep reading, but I'll keep bitching when need be. :)
Wow, I could refute a few things... but I won't because it'll exacerbate things and go against my whole "let's de-politify things." But at the risk of making me a hypocrite I've gotta address one thing 'cuz I keep seeing it over and over and, forgive my bluntness, but it's so *dumb* I can't believe right-wingers are using it for a talking point, and it drives me mad. And it's the thing about the billions of dollars worth of military equipment. Y'all DO realize that that stuff was intended for the use of the Afghan army to fight the Taliban, right? In fact, they *owned* a lot of it -- if we took it back, we'd be stealing it. Plus, do you really thing *disarming* our allies over there when they're supposed to fight the Taliban would've been a good idea? It's on them that they scattered back to their tribes rather than make use of it -- or the extensive training we spent 20 years giving them -- but it would have been unconscionable to take all that gear and then leave them to face the Taliban. It's not going to help them much, anyway -- they'll never keep it running.
Here's a guy who was a former contractor who explains it better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVQKK9c4tUk&t=373s That's pretty much the ONLY guy I recommend on YouTube. Like him or not, he knows his stuff and is damn near impossible to refute and cuts through a lot of bullshit from both sides. Watching him will help ya.
Yep, I looked up that Messman scary-fish novel and saw you'd reviewed it -- I forgot about that one. I still haven't tried tackling it again, and it may take me a while since I tried another "critter" book last week and it was so bad it'll make me gun-shy for a while. (Don't bother seeking out "Bonegrinder" by John Lutz, it's just not worth it!) Maybe he thought Nick Carter books were misogynistic and he needed to play to it? I mean, they kinda are, in general, but his entries seem to be a lot nastier about it.
Oh, I still plot and plan a return to the blog... I sure have enough reviews backed up to fill a ton of posts, but I have an aversion (more of a mental block) to turning on the big computer and doing that much typing, 'cuz it always ends up eating an entire weekend day. I have lousy time-discipline and hoard my free time like gold, so it's hard to devote some to the blog. I'm like, "Yeah, I could type that stuff up... but I COULD read more books instead! So I end up doing that. But, it's still in my mind to post some stuff at some point. I'll have to type up some short stories in the next few weeks for Halloween, anyway. And I'll also have to make a hypocrite out of myself and do a VERY political post (I'll put a big "ya may wanna skip this" warning on it) because I forced myself to read one of William W. Johnstone's "Ashes" novels, and it's impossible to talk about those without getting political, 'cuz that's all those books are. Damn sure ain't no "action" in 'em! It'll be a review all by itself because I think that book *owes* me something; I've been trying to force myself through it since the mid-80's and finally got stubborn enough. It's probably the meanest -- but funniest -- thing I ever wrote, and it's LONG. I keep adding to it, because I hate the book that much... not due to the politics (you can hardly get offended at those because they're so pathetic -- Johnstone was so stupid and confused about what he believed that he managed to be a "right-wing Communist" more than anything else, absurd as that sounds) but just due to the awfulness of the writing. The man had no skills whatsoever, and yet his ego? Ye godz. And wow did he love rape. Lordy-lord.
Hi Zwolf, one thing I wanted to point out vis-a-vis your comment on the military gear is that at least some of it still works...you've seen the photos of the guy being hanged from a Blackhawk as it flies over Kabul, haven't you? Or how about those photos of more gear being transported to Iran. Perhaps Rachel Maddow or CNN didn't report on it, but on-the-ground photos as ever tell a different story. I'll admit, the question on the state of the equipment left behind is a tricky one, particularly given that this administration can't be trusted on pretty much anything. They're desperate to turn a military defeat (probably one of the biggest in our history, as it will turn out) into a victory. But wait, I'm forgetting the new narrative: "The Taliban are our BFFs! They're gonna help us fight, uh, Isis-K, and...and they're gonna include women in their government! No, our biggest threat is domestic white extremists! Now I have to go, because they told me I couldn't take any more questions!" Seriously, I'd love to know from those of you who voted for Biden...aren't you all the least bit curious who the "they" are he's always saying have told him what to do?? I mean just the least little bit curious? Four years ago, when the media was like sharks with blood in the water, they would've been all over such a story. Now of course it's crickets from the press. But then it's understandable, as surely all of them voted for the guy.
Also, I did want to clarify that I don't consider myself "right wing," though that might sound ridiculous at this point. I'm just for individual liberty, freedom of thought and speech, and accountability from those in charge. As things have developed today, you don't get any of those things from the left. As you should know from reading this blog, I love that whole '60s/'70s counterculture, and I could listen to a JFK speech any day of the week. So I have a definite appreciation for the left...as it once was. Now it is a cesspit of corruption, identity politics, urban terrorism, and totalitarianism. It boggles my mind that more people can't see it. I'm like, does the boot literally need to be stamping on your face for you to get it?
Also I like your theory on Messmann, re playing it up for the market. His books are indeed nastier than the rest...only Manning Lee Stokes I think would give him a run for his money on the series. Stokes's Carter was also a bit of a prick and had a very dark side; "The Red Rays" features a memorable bit of him screwing this double agent spy-babe and thinking to himself how she's soon to be killed -- that he's "screwing a corpse," as it were. And he keeps reflecting on this throughout the novel. Plus he's the narrator of the book, so it really comes off as creepy. Actually, Messmann came onto the scene after Stokes, so maybe Stokes's interpretation was the one he based his Carter on.
I'd love to read your Johnstone review. I'm seeing a lot of similiarity between Johnstone, Mark Roberts, William Crawford, and Martin Caidin, in both content and style. The reactionary political vibe is also there in all of them. Anyway, thanks again for the comment, sorry you and I disagree on the real-world stuff, but glad we're on the same page when it comes to books!
FYI, I just looked into that "guy hanging from a Blackhawk" thing, and now Reuters, that bastion of unbiased reporting, has "fact-checked it" (such a priceless claim from today's media) and claims the dude was not in fact being hanged, but merely attached to a harness or somesuch. So I was wrong, they really are our BFFs, and just a nice bunch of guys!
Meanwhile, four Gitmo detainees released by Obama are now ministers in the new Afghanistan government, which will be officially introduced...on September 11.
(Zwolf again)
You know I've gotta answer this back, right? :) And I'm gonna have to split it up into installments, 'cuz I'm wordy. I'm not gonna get into this as much as I could because, like I said, it shouldn't be a political blog, and it would take a lot of time, and I still wouldn't change your mind. You're going to believe what you want. In evidence, you were wrong about the guy being hanged by the 'copter(and misled to believe that by source you likely still will still trust next time they want you to react to something they misrepresent), but your response is to suggest Reuters is lying because you can't *really* let go of the bad thing you were told initially and would still like to believe. Sometimes it's not "bias," dude -- sometimes it's just accurate reporting and things aren't the way we might like to believe. If you want actual *truth,* then fact-checking is never the enemy, no matter which "team" is being fact-checked. And you blame Obama for four Gitmo detainees while completely ignoring 5000 guys who Trump released, or that Trump made promises to the Taliban and gave them concessions while completely leaving the Afghan government out of the loop, etc. https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/trump-taliban/ And I don't know of anyone thinking "the Taliban are our BFFs." That's a bullshit accusation, nobody thinks that. And "biggest military defeat in history"? Maybe, if you never heard of the Tet Offensive, Operation Market Garden, Little Big Horn, Kasserine Pass, Task Force Smith in Korea, The Alamo, or the Iraq War, or a bunch of others... then sure.
The real truth is, we won the *war* in Afghanistan, battle for battle, but we just failed at nation-building... which was never the goal anyway. It's not a country, it's a collection of religious tribes, all doing the only thing religion's ever been really good at -- creating divisions and giving people reasons to war. But if you want to look at it as a military defeat, you can. It's definitely a huge ugly mess, whatever it is, and was always going to be. Could Biden have handled it better and made it less of a mess? Absofuckin'lutely and by a lot. But it had to end somewhere. We should've been out once Bin Laden got scragged. I will say that at least Biden did a pretty good job cleaning up his mess, with that massive airlift effort. Not perfect by any means, but certainly impressive. Once again I'll defer to this guy on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-D8RIxz1io
Really, there's nowhere I can go in a discussion of this with you because you're starting from a position of what, I have to be honest, looks to me to be blinders-on indoctrination. You think the left is the side that's about terrorism and totalitarianism... when a right-wing mob attempted a coup on January 6th because a mentally-ill narcissist president's ego couldn't take losing a fair election, lied to them about it, and they believed one of the biggest serial liars ever born and were eager to kill over it. That's a pretty big thing to overlook when we're deciding which side's more totalitarian or terroristic.
So I don't know what the value'll be in this discussion. I read what you say, I agree with some, and some I recognize as you being misled, such as the Blackhawk thing, or unfocused, like 4 released detainees being larger than 5000 released Taliban. And it's too one-sided for me to want to butt heads about much. You'll believe the worst about Dems and will mistrust any source debunking it, and excuse the bad from the right completely, so I see no sign at all that any discussion between us would go anywhere good. (Yet here I am, doing it, dumb stubborn bastard than I am. :) )
I know I'm not going to change your mind, so I'll just restate my position, which I've said here before: I'm not very fond the left, a lot of liberals are whiny and nitpicky and uptight and annoy the shit out of me. The farther left they go, the crazier and more unreasonable I think they are. And I'm for reasonable gun control but I've got guns and I'm pretty fucking good with them (same for my "liberal" buddies down here), and I believe in the death penalty, capitalism, etc. I'm definitely a capitalist, but don't think some "socialism" is awful, either (the fire department works pretty good). I'd like to tighten the borders, but I'd also like to be the kind of country that takes in refugees escaping dire circumstances... which is what a lot of the people crossing the border are. When I take political tests I come out more centrist than anything, but nowdays centrists tend to get pushed left, so... okay, I'll claim Left if that's the only label allowed me, even if I don't love 'em. Because...
... lord, son, do I fucking hate the goddamned Right. Conservatism is a total non-starter with me, for a lot of reasons. First being track record. I live in Mississippi and I have seen the bad results we get. I've lived under 'em my whole life. Conservatism had its chance and all it's gotten us are the worst results in the nation, in everything from highest infant mortality to highest poverty to worst education and health care; you name it. And I know the GOP from the inside: I have Republican operatives in my family. I've seen how corrupt that party is first hand. I've got a cousin who got out of prison for armed robbery because his rich dad gave Trent Lott a payoff to wipe his record. I have another who got Katrina cash from Haley Barbour that was *not* meant for the project he got. Other family members have gotten favors done by the Pickerings, who are essentially mobbed up. I've seen the gerrymandering, I've heard the things they say about Black people (which isn't the term they use), I've heard them laugh at their own base. I know conservatives well, my family's mostly conservative, I went to one of the "academies" the Conservative Citizens Councils (my uncle was a member and they were basically the Klan in suits) set up to get around integration. I've experienced this stuff first-hand and for my entire life conservatives have always been the idiots and the bigots who've tried to limit my liberty, not preserve it. And I have seen FAR too much bigotry out of 'em for me to stomach. I cannot stand a fucking racist or a bully, and not all conservatives are racist... but the ones who aren't tend not to see that as a deal-breaker for 'em. They protect a lot of bad ideas that should be changed. There are some conservatives I love dearly, but overall I just don't see 'em as "the good guys." They have never in my life respected individuality. I've had knives pulled on me twice because I don't go to church. I've gotten in fights for wearing Black Sabbath tee-shirts, I've constnatly had to work around their censorship to see and listen to and read what I want. And on and on and on. So, no, I can't see them as the protectors of individual liberty or freedom. And I see no accountability from 'em. January 6th is a case in point. That there are congress people trying to downplay or defend that is flat-out absurd.
And all of that was just back when we'd disagree on facts. Facts seem to be a smaller part of their minds now, though: they're getting worse and more deranged, believing absolutely absurd bullshit, just embarrassing stuff. Deciding "God" chose Trump (because he won) but not Biden (who won more decisively but they think that's only won because of some crazy conspiracy that God somehow was too powerless to stop, I guess), QAnon, JFK Jr. returning from the dead and this time he'd be a Republican, Democrats running pedophile rings and drinking baby's blood. It's not enough to just disagree with somebody anymore, they gotta be VAMPIRES! And vaccinations will magnetize you, and "demons" are guiding people, they're attacking people for taking common-sense precautions during a freakin' pandemic, etc. Their collective judgement I just cannot trust. They're so tanked-up on absolute lies that they're attacking the Capitol and trying to kill elected officials. And, yes, radicalized white extremists ARE a bigger domestic threat than just about any other thing facing us now, because they're here and we still have to protect their "rights," even when they're using them to destroy the country. That coup attempt on January 6th is pretty hard to excuse.
I can be critical about Dems. And I am. But the Republicans have become more of a cult than a political party now, and their "news sources" are old televangelism scams adapted to what's become a political religion. Democrats, bad as they can be, seem to be the only option available to me, because people waving swastika flags in the street? Those are my enemies, every goddamn time. And anybody timid about calling them what they are, I have a problem with. Yeah, the left riots in the street, too, and I don't like that at all, I wish it didn't happen, but if I HAVE to pick a cause for violence, I'll go with Black people's lives mattering as much as mine does.
I can get that Democrats annoy you, for reasons sometimes legitimate which I share, and sometimes due to reasons that I think you've been misled into believing. But how the stuff that far too much of the Right is doing doesn't bother you more bewilders me. I think you're focused on the flaws on one side, because they annoy you, and ignoring bigger ones on the side you've chosen, just because they're the opposition.
And I'll leave it at that, because we'll just make each other mad, or I'll make some observer mad and they'll want to join in, etc. Doesn't seem much point. I'm sure you'll disagree with a lot of this, and, of course, you can. If you want to tell me, you can, but it'll probably be best if I don't reply to it further and keep dragging things out.
But, yeah, we can agree on books, at least. Hopefully that'll be more important. :)
For some reason my name didn't go through -- I'm Steve Johnson, and I wrote the second comment supporting your common-sense exasperation with our political masters. Love this blog! It's to the point now where other review sites which don't go into as much detail don't seem worth my time.
I, too, have a late-Roman Empire feeling about our times. Of course, the Romans lasted hundreds of years after they ceased practicing democracy, so we might all make out okay in a purely material sense.
Did you ever read INSIDE THE SOVIET ARMY by Viktor Suvorov? His model of the USSR was a triangle of power between the Army, the KGB, and the Party. Each had a power the others did not, but whenever one of them would try to get supreme power, the other two would combine to put them down. It occurs to me that we have evidence the military, the intel agencies, and the Democratic Party are each doing their own thing in loose concert, but they're probably competing for top dog. Suvorov contends that such a political triangle is very stable, because each leg acts to preserve itself against the others. Sort of like the executive-legislative-judicial triangle we were all taught in school, which is now irrelevant.
So the good news is this illegal, immoral, often actively evil system might not collapse for a very long time, which at least protects us from civil war. It does suggest the economy won't ever recover, because contending factions tend to steal all the extra money before their rivals can get it.
I guess that's also the bad news.
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